Respite
by Javer
Summary: A brief, enlightening look at Yusuke's thoughts and actions after Genkai's battle with Toguro at the Dark Tournament. Please review! Rated PG just as a precaution. Enjoy!


  Intro: Hello everybody!  Call me Javer—to put it in easy dictionary-esque pronunciation form, juh-VAIR.  Don't pronounce it JAY-ver.  I'm new to the fanfiction field, but feel free to say anything you want about this little experimental work—in fact, bury me in reviews.  Cut off my air with the massive flood of opinions.  Praise, flames, bonfires, infernos, whatever.  I appreciate it very much!  It's not very good, but I hope you like it anyway.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own Yusuke, Genkai, or any other characters, techniques, etc. mentioned in this fanfic.

Respite

  A slight breeze cooled the evening air.  The cloudless sky glimmered dully with a mural of purples and oranges, transforming everything into a dusky shadow.  Distant giants of mountains were starved of light.  The dense forests became blood-drenched fingers, greedily reaching and reaching for what could not be taken.  But then, that was the way things went on Hanging-neck Island.  Nothing real could ever be seen; all the important things were always shrouded phantoms.  Always.

  For the moment, at least.

  On a small cliff of stone stood a boy.  His face was obscured, the silhouette so complete that even his neatly slicked-down hair showed none of its usual shine.  His tattered, dimly yellow shirt sleeve flapped half-heartedly in the gentle wind.  His hands were running an  unnoticed trickle of blood, the source four crescent-shaped cuts on his palm.  His nails pierced the tough flesh unconsciously.  His fists clenched, trembling like living rocks.

  Yusuke Urameshi was thinking hard, his brown eyes glistening at the sunset.  He was thinking of age.

  What was age?  It was a confrontation of sorts, he supposed.  A fight.  A continual fight that sometimes turned in your favor, sometimes not.  A fight that you could never win, no matter how tough you acted or how much you puffed yourself up.  It didn't matter if you were good or bad, weak or strong, or anything at all.  Age would never lose.  Though sometimes . . .

_  Life is a fight, Yusuke.  Toguro ran away from that fight._

  Sometimes you cheated.

  Yusuke's mouth opened slightly, but it was only so he could bite his lip.  They were dry as death.  The simile stung, stung as hard as it possibly could, again and again and Yusuke felt the jabs, more agonizing than anything.  Anything including . . . No.  He refused to dwell on it.

  _I want to beat Toguro, but not if it means killing the one person who ever taught me anything useful.  I'm sorry, but-_

  "-I give up," he said—tried to say.  The lump in his throat grew.  He swallowed with difficulty.

  Now the boy cloaked in shadow moved.  His right arm twitched, almost impulsively, and then it moved.  It moved slowly upwards, till it was pointing straight at the horizon, and his left grasped the wrist.  The limp hand seemed to grow stronger and more mobile with every passing second, until it stopped in a familiar symbol.  Thumb up, index finger out . . .

  The sign of the gun.

  The air surrounding Yusuke stirred into a milky haze.  It stirred, then swept, then swirled.  The air became a breath, and the breath became wind, a wild gyrating wind that had no cares and no plan—exactly what Yusuke wanted.  The wind heated up, and suddenly blazed into bluish life.  His view of the outside world was obscured by his tornadoing energy, but he didn't want to see the outside world.  He wanted to see what lay beyond.

  A tiny rock dislodged itself from the ground, and began hovering several inches above.  As if it were a signal flare, more stones unearthed themselves.  A huge gray cube the size of a microwave led the pack in slowly ascending, climbing the invisible ladder.  Then, all the chunks of earth began crumbling away . . . but crumbling . . . upwards . . . 

  They were being gradually disintegrated.

  The bright flame of Yusuke's Spirit Energy rose hungrily to claim the bloody sky, eating away the black, almost tangible ooze of darkness, and shooting to grasp the stars.  A tiny point of light, no bigger than a marble, flashed into existence at the very tip of Yusuke's extended finger, pulsating and glowing like it would never stop.  This marble of power was the culmination of his teacher's greatest work.  This was the power of her creation, the Spirit Wave Orb.  This was Genkai's power.  This was Genkai.

  "SPIRIT GUN!!"

  He was afraid of what happened next for a long time.

  Afterwards, Yusuke could clearly recall having honestly and lucidly believed that his finger had exploded.  That it had simply burst with the tremendous force compressed inside.  In reality, however . . . 

  His entire body jerked back as if he were a cannon that had been fired.  The blue bonfire of light had intensified tenfold, and the spirit bullet had launched itself directly forward, not like a bullet, not like a missile, like a _nuke_, it had launched and thrown itself forward exactly like a supercharged _nuke_, a nuke that tore through a tree like a fist through thin paper, shredded it, covered the ground all around it with gore of bark and sap, annihilated a boulder with a crushing, screaming sound, arced gracefully upwards, and shot off into the sky, an azure lightning bolt.

  The hurricane of energy faded.  Yusuke shook and trembled harder than he'd ever before in his life.  Rando, Suzaku, Chu, Jin, none of them, none of his toughest adversaries could ever have been able to stand up to this kind of power.  Just think!  If he had been able, to able to, ABLE to became a sick chant in his head, repeating and chanting and whirling and swirling . . .

  He felt dizzy.  He sat down.

  Yusuke sat there for a long time, all but cataleptic, nearly in shock.  

  Genkai had had power like this.  He'd known she was powerful but just _how_ powerful, he'd had no idea.  None at all.

*                      *                      *

  After a few hours, he got up.  He was grinning.

  "TOGURO!  You hear me, you twisted freak show?!  Come and get me now, huh?

COME AND GET ME NOW!!" he screamed, laughing maniacally.

  "Yeah!" he yelled, dancing around.  "I can do this!  I can win!  All thanks to-"

  To what?

  He stopped abruptly.  What was he saying?  Had he come so far to act like this, laughing and dancing and screaming with joy over a power that had come with the price tag that it had?  He sobered immediately, shaking his head lightly, with the slightest hint of a smile as all on his face.  "Yeah, you're right.  Sorry, old lady . . ."

  The young Spirit Detective looked out into the horizon.  He would beat Toguro.  He had to.  It was for Genkai.  For Genkai.

  "For Genkai," he murmured.

  The shadows were gone.


End file.
